


Grief Talks

by meaninglessblah



Series: Gift Fics [13]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Coma, Gen, Hospitals, Hurt No Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M, Possible Character Death, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:54:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27239125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meaninglessblah/pseuds/meaninglessblah
Summary: He skirts his palm up the blue sheets, just far enough to touch his fingertips to the knuckles of Tim’s hand, feel the leech of cold into his own skin. Impart his own warmth, maybe.“If you die,” Damian croaks after a long minute of counting Tim’s heartbeats, “I’m going to kill you.”
Relationships: Tim Drake/Damian Wayne
Series: Gift Fics [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1960108
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	Grief Talks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alphaofallcats](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alphaofallcats/gifts).



> An old prompt fill, moved over from Tumblr. The prompts were “I think I’m in love with you and I’m terrified.” and “If you die, I’m gonna kill you.”, asked by i-am-verybusy <3

Damian curls his fingers into a fist, and tries to imagine what Father would do in this situation. Pictures the crease of his brow and the downwards curl of his lips. Feels out his own frown, rearranges the thin line of his own mouth. 

He’d seen his shattered visage hanging over Todd’s hospital bed like a shroud, features slack and limp in their grief. He hadn’t cried, hadn’t moved for days; a ghostly-pale spectre bound to the unmoving man, eyes tracing the paths of tubes dripping life into his battered body. 

Father doesn’t talk through his grief. Damian’s unlearning his behaviour, still. Years beneath the squeeze of Alfred’s palm on his shoulder, and Dick’s embrace wrapped around his ribs, have gradually broken down Damian’s resolve. 

He would have thought that a weakness when he was younger. But Damian’s a man now, his _own_ man, and he knows grief like every other. 

He can’t stand to lose another brother, not another one. Damian doesn’t know how he survived the last time - and death has a tenuous, impermanent relationship with their family, but Damian _can’t_ watch this one die. 

He skirts his palm up the blue sheets, just far enough to touch his fingertips to the knuckles of Tim’s hand, feel the leech of cold into his own skin. Impart his own warmth, maybe. 

“If you die,” Damian croaks after a long minute of counting Tim’s heartbeats, “I’m going to kill you.” 

The man doesn’t move, and Damian studies his features; plasters the sight of those affronted lashes fluttering, those soft lips twisting into a grimace, over the unbearable impassiveness he sees now. Imagines the cutting retort flung back at him in that tone. Traces the line of the corrugated piping that disappears down Tim’s throat, the way it presses back his vocal chords. Silences him in his induced slumber. 

Damian lifts his palm and massages the bridge of his nose, fingers twitching against Tim’s knuckles. “I’m serious, Dra-” he promises in a low, gravelly note, and it sounds so much like his father, so much like the Batman, that he stops. 

He lowers his palm to the sheets, expression bleeding to remorse, to regret. He has to swallow a few times before he can manage to speak again, can manage words past the obstruction high in the throat. 

“Tim,” he murmurs, and it sounds like a confession in the quiet hum of the empty room. There’s no one here with him; just Damian, and the unmoving man on the bed. “ _Tim_. I’m sorry.” 

His eyes itch. Tim doesn’t move, and Damian drags in a slow, centering breath. Hates that he’s deflecting, compressing, _denying_ his emotions here, now. 

“I’m sorry that I didn’t get there fast enough,” Damian mumbles, fingers tightening on the sheets. Unable to tighten around the hand beneath his, the hand he _wants_ to be holding. He can’t allow himself to, not now, not like this. “That I wasn’t _capable_ of getting there quickly. I’m sorry I wasn’t… wasn’t enough for you.” 

Damian watches Tim’s fingers. Imagines a twitch to them that isn’t there; anything to soothe his frayed nerves. Conjures the sight of them dancing over a keyboard, white-knuckled around a staff - always determined, always fighting, always _moving_. 

Tim doesn’t just _stop_. Not death, or destruction, or even Damian had been able to stifle the burning brightness of Tim. 

To see him like this. Bruised. Beaten. Destroyed. 

~~Dead.~~

Damian swallows hard, and is hardly surprised when it comes back up as a hiccup, a soft prayer to the world as he curls forward, presses his forehead to Tim’s hip where it lies beneath the blankets. He takes his hand then, because there’s no one to see him, no one to care, and he takes solace in his loneliness, in this last gift the universe has to offer him on the precipice of ruin. 

Damian imagines Tim’s fingers in his hair, stroking over his scalp like his mother had when he’d buried his face in her skirts. So young, rippling with unquenchable emotion, unable to force the sobs back down into his own small chest. Filled to the brim with grief so boundless it consumes him. His tears stain the material beneath his closed eyelids. 

“Tim, please,” Damian whispers into the sheets, fingers clutched tight around fingers. Hard enough to hurt, to earn him a reprimand, a biting snarl. Tim doesn’t move. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Please, forgive me. Or don’t. Hate me, if you have to. Just, please…” 

He inhales shakily, the sound of his breaths some perverse harmony to the staccato bleat of Tim’s heart, struggling under the weight of all-too-human entropy. 

He feels helpless, he feels… 

“I think,” Damian croaks, and has to stop. Has to swallow, and exhale, and cough up another wet, mewling sob, before he can continue. He lifts his head, face cold and eyes no longer itching as he clings to Tim’s fingers. Maps out the features of his face like an artist over a canvas, committing every stroke of the Maker’s brush to memory. 

The room is empty. Damian’s alone. 

~~It doesn’t matter.~~

_It does, it does._

“I think I’m in love with you,” Damian whispers, and hates the relief that comes with the confession, hates the reprieve, now, when he feels like he’s rippling apart. “And I’m _terrified_.” 

The break echoes in the room, mocking Damian in his own fading tones as he watches the man in the bed. Watches the slow, automated heave of Tim’s chest. Feels his own shuddering beneath the drag of his echoed breaths. 

“I’m terrified, Tim,” he says, and blinks back the blur again. “I’m terrified because I don’t know if you can hear me. I don’t know if this matters, now. I don’t know if I’m too late, and I _hate_ -” 

He chokes, presses out the sob, and amends. 

“I _love_ you, Timothy,” Damian professes, curled over a deathbed. Sheltering the man beneath his bulk, now that he’s too late. Now that he can’t protect him. 

~~A failure.~~

His chest quietens in the silence, the well of emotion sapping with the lack of movement, the lack of acknowledgement, the lack of reciprocation beneath him. Damian feels hollow, all of his insides purged, laid bare on the tear-soaked sheets as he watches Tim with grim grief. 

“I love you,” he repeats quietly, dismally. _It doesn’t matter, now._ His fingers slip from Tim’s, curling away from the unmoving man as Damian pulls back, pulls away. Recedes back from the husk of a man who had once burned so bright. 

The words sound like a plea, unfulfilled and unrequited. 

“I love you.” 

**Author's Note:**

> [ ](https://linktr.ee/meaninglessblah)


End file.
